My Remarks at the Launch of Unity Pilgrim: The Life of Fr Gerry Reynolds CSsR

My latest book, Unity Pilgrim: The Life of Fr Gerry Reynolds CSsR, was launched yesterday evening at Clonard Monastery in Belfast. The main speaker was the Rev Dr Ken Newell, a former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and a good friend of Gerry, who passed away in 2015.

Ken spoke of Gerry’s beautiful life, and how he embodied a loving, inclusive church of the future. He also reminded us of the challenges of ministering in a violent and divided society in which few seemed concerned about Christian peacemaking or ecumenism. Gerry weathered those challenges and inspired many more to join him on a journey of building a better future.

I have reproduced my own short remarks below.

There will be a second launch at Mount St Alphonsus in Limerick on Monday 27 May, after the 7.15 pm Mass. The speaker will be Ed Petersen, who worked with Gerry in Clonard’s peace and reconciliation ministry.

You can purchase the book in reception at Clonard or online at Redemptorist Communications.

Photo, left to right: Noreen Castle (Gerry’s sister), Rev Ken Newell, Gladys Ganiel, and Lady Jean Mayhew

Remarks at the Launch of Unity Pilgrim: The Life of Fr Gerry Reynolds CSsR

Clonard Monastery, Belfast, 22 May 2019

Gladys Ganiel

Good evening, and thank you for coming to celebrate the launch of Unity Pilgrim. I will be forever grateful to Rev Ken Newell for asking me to write the book; and more importantly, for convincing Fr Gerry that telling his story was a good idea. Writing this book has been one of the most meaningful and rewarding experiences of my life.

A whole host of people have made this book possible; many of you are here tonight. Over the last four years, I often was approached by people wanting to tell me a story about Gerry. Word had gotten around that I was writing his biography, and it was as if people felt compelled to tell me how much Gerry meant to them. Some of you here told me those stories. And while they all didn’t make it into the book, every story gave me some insight into the man and helped me with the task.

A few of you deserve special mention for going above and beyond in your assistance: Fr Michael Kelleher, Fr Noel Kehoe and Fr Peter Burns ensured I had access to Gerry’s papers after his death; Therese Cullen transcribed all the interviews; and Rev Sam Burch, Peter Burns, Gerry’s sister Noreen Castle, my father Carl Ganiel, Ken Newell and Sandra Rutherford read full drafts of the manuscript and their comments improved it immeasurably. Ed Petersen, Jean Mayhew and some who wish to remain anonymous also read portions of the manuscript. The team at Redemptorist Communications was supportive throughout. Others are mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book.

Gerry agreed to the biography because Ken convinced him that sharing his story could inspire others to continue the work he had dedicated his life to. As I read Gerry’s diaries, I came across instances when he contemplated writing the story of his time in Belfast. He was aware of the historical significance of his work with Fr Alec Reid in behind-the-scenes aspects of the peace process. He also believed that his public ecumenical ministry was in some ways a signpost for the future of Irish Christianity. I cannot emphasize that enough: Gerry’s vision was one of an island reconciled, and not just politically. For him it was perhaps even more fundamentally a vision of an island on which Catholics and Protestants recognized each other as sisters and brothers and were in full communion with one another. Gerry thought of the Church as ‘God’s peace process in human history’ and a divided Church did not model that vision; in fact, he believed that a divided Church had cost lives.

I thought that the only way that readers could understand how Gerry had dedicated himself to his challenging ministry in Belfast would be to tell his story from birth to death, an approach that provides, I think, something new even for those who knew him personally and knew him well. I trust that even for those of you who knew Gerry well there will be surprises and new insights in this story: how as a young boy he was shaped by his family’s faith and the rhythms and rituals of Catholic culture in his native Co Limerick, the importance of his friendships within the Jesus Caritas Fraternity, the value he placed on the gifts and vocation of women in all the churches, his leading role in modernizing Catholic journalism in Dublin in the 1970s, what he called the ‘failure’ of his time as Rector at Mount St Alphonsus in Limerick, his decades-long celibate relationship with a female Religious anam cara (Irish for ‘soul friend’), which he described to me as love, his disciplined practice of prayer, his prayers for the Rev Ian Paisley over many years, his private prayers of petition to Protestant Reformers like John Calvin and John Wesley, his agony about the canon law’s prohibition on shared Eucharist, and how he handled his disappointment when other Christians didn’t rally enthusiastically to his ideas about ecumenism and reconciliation, just to name a few.

I want to conclude with something of a ‘spoiler alert’: I am going to read you the book’s final paragraph. In the spirit of a book written to inspire others to continue Gerry’s work, I see this final paragraph as something of a ‘commission’. It says:

One week after Gerry agreed with me that I would write his biography, he wrote in his journal: ‘I pray for a good outcome to the sharing of my story with Gladys Ganiel.’ The story you hold in your hands is an outcome of that prayer. I am certain that Gerry’s idea of a ‘good outcome’ would be that you continue the journey where he left off.

 Thank you for listening.